Christina Timber and Heleen Cornet receive Prins Bernhard Fund awards

Christina “Teacher Kriss” Timber-Glover received the Prince Bernhard Cul­ture Fund Caribbean (PB­CFC) performing arts award during a ceremony at Ocean View Terrace bar and restaurant on Sat­urday. The same honours were bestowed upon Saban artist Heleen Cornet in the visual-arts category on Au­gust 23.

Prince Bernhard Fund representative for St. Eu­statius, Jessica Berkel, Government Commission­er Marcolino “Mike” Fran­co, Reverend Vincia Celes­tine of Bethel Methodist Church, PBCFC treasurer Valesca Richards, chef de bureau Melanie Sloot and many family members and friends of Timber-Glover were present on Saturday.

Established in 1953, the Prince Bernhard Fund provides financial support for activities ranging from history and literature to performing arts, monu­ment and nature preserva­tion, visual arts and cultural education.

The selection committee for the award consisted of Carla Duinkerk and Mar­cella Gibbs-Marsdin. The nomination for the award was put in by Misha Span­ner, Jan Meijer and Leono­ra Sneek-Gibbs.

Timber-Glover won the award for performing arts, one of six award categories for residents of Aruba, Bo­naire, Curacao, Saba, St. Eustatius and St. Maarten, due to her dedicated ser­vice over the years to the performing arts in St. Eu­statius. She founded St. Eustatius Aloei Historical Dancers in 2001. Over the past years, the dancers have been a staple in the perfor­mance world on the island. Berkel said that over the years Timber-Glover has done much to keep the art of dance going in Statia.

Previous Statia winners include Gibbs-Marsdin for the promotion of culture and Spanner for her wealth of poems, stories, skits and plays and for working with the youth to preserve culture and history via St. Eustatius Historical Foun­dation’s Simon Doncker Club.

Timber-Glover thanked her husband Maldwyn Timber for donating his time as a sound engineer for the Aloei Dancers dur­ing shows over the years. She also thanked the many persons who contributed their time, effort and other contributions to the group’s survival. Timber said they had faced many struggles and obstacles, such as find­ing a permanent space to practise their choreogra­phy.

Saban artist Heleen Cor­net also received an award from the Prince Bernhard Fund for her achievements in the visual arts. Cornet has been living on various islands in the Dutch Carib­bean for 40 years. During those years she has made thousands of paintings.

She could be found regu­larly at the top of Mount Scenery, where she made drawings of Saba’s dra­matic rainforest. These drawings resulted in big oil-and watercolour-on-canvas paintings. Her outdoor paintings show the great di­versity of her work and the captivating beauty of Saba.

Cornet was born in the Netherlands, where she obtained a degree in Edu­cation and a Master’s de­gree in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Amersfoort.

After having lived in Nor­way for a couple of years she moved to Bonaire in 1975. There she taught fine arts at the local high school for five years. After living for one year in Curacao and St. Maarten, she moved in 1986 to Saba, where she has been working as an art teacher at Saba Compre­hensive School.

Cornet published several books together with her husband, marine biologist Tom van’t Hof, for the ma­rine parks of Bonaire, Cu­racao and Saba, for which she made the illustrations. The books Saban Cottages and Echoes of the Past are illustrated with waterco­lours depicting picturesque historical houses in Saba and St. Eustatius.

The Daily Herald.